Latest news with #RueSaint-Honoré
Washington Post
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
My country's shameful fight to keep Nazi-looted art
David Jimenez is a Spanish journalist and author, and is the former editor in chief of El Mundo. MADRID — For a country that gave the world Picasso and boasts some of the finest art collections in its museums, the decision should have been simple. When Camille Pissarro's 'Rue Saint-Honoré,' a painting stolen by the Nazis from Lilly Cassirer, was discovered by her grandson Claude in 2000 in Madrid's state-owned Thyssen-Bornemisza museum, Spain should have sent it to its rightful Jewish owners in California. Instead, my country has spent the past 25 years, a fortune in legal bills and its reputation to keep it. In doing so, Spain has placed itself in a dishonorable group of nations that obstruct the return of art stolen from victims of war and genocide, alongside countries such as Russia, Turkey and Romania. It is time for Madrid to acknowledge that, beyond the legal dispute, this case raises a far more essential moral issue. No piece of art, however valuable, is worth betraying the memory of Holocaust victims. The California State Legislature gave Spain yet another opportunity to do the right thing in September 2024 by passing a bill that would strengthen the claims of citizens seeking to recover stolen art held around the world. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed the bill into law surrounded by the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Among them was David Cassirer, the last direct descendant of the family that has long fought to reclaim the Pissarro stolen by the Nazis from his great-grandmother, Lilly Cassirer. For the Cassirer family, the painting's material value (estimated at more than $50 million) has always been secondary. 'This painting symbolizes a chance for Holocaust victims and their families to recover at least a small part of what was taken,' David Cassirer told me, reflecting on the emotional toll the legal battle has had on his family. His father, mother and sister died without seeing the family's rightful claim to the Pissarro artwork affirmed. Armed with the California legislation, David Cassirer's attorneys filed a petition on Dec. 6 in the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which ruled, despite a prior unanimous Supreme Court ruling in the Cassirers' favor on a procedural issue, that Spain could keep the painting. Regardless of the court's decision this time, further legal battles are inevitable — something Spain should strive to avoid. Even the Thyssen museum's own lawyers do not dispute that Lilly Cassirer was coerced into handing the painting over to the Nazis in exchange for the documents she needed to escape Germany in 1939. 'Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie' (Rue Saint-Honoré, Afternoon, Rain Effect), which Pissarro painted from his hotel window during the winter of 1897, passed through the hands of various private collectors before being acquired in 1976 by Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, whose family had close ties to Adolf Hitler. The collection's arrival in Spain came about through a romantic twist when the aristocrat married his fifth wife, Carmen Cervera, a former Miss Spain, whom he introduced to the world of art. Cervera would be instrumental in the baron's decision to sell to the Spanish state, in 1993, a collection that included 'Rue Saint-Honoré.' The Pissarro, measuring 32 by 26 inches, hangs on a wall in Room 33 of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid. Though it is an important work of 19th-century French impressionism, parting with it would hardly cause great damage to Spanish cultural heritage; keeping it illegitimately, on the other hand, has serious implications for art restitution rights around the world. A dangerous precedent is set every time a country, a museum or a private collector refuses to return a piece of art taken from victims of war, persecution or genocide. Spanish law permits the buyer of a stolen item to legalize it after having owned it uninterruptedly for six years. California's legislature tried to address this with the bill passed last year, stating that California law instead of foreign law must apply in lawsuits over art looted during the Holocaust and other persecution. Spain's laws represent a dream scenario for art traffickers. My country now risks becoming a haven for looted art. Other than exploiting Spain's 'finders-keepers' law, the main argument Spain has raised over the years has been that Lilly Cassirer was compensated for her loss when she accepted a reparation payment of 120,000 deutsche marks from Germany in 1958, netting her $13,000. But the family and the German government were unaware of the whereabouts of the 'Rue Saint-Honoré' at the time. And Germany's Supreme Court and the federal courts in California have conclusively held that Germany's 1958 payment does not preclude the Cassirers from being able to physically recover the painting. The family has also promised, in the court record, that if it does recover the painting, it will repay Germany. Spain's insistence on advancing this inaccurate narrative of greed on the family's part is very troubling. Returning the painting to Lilly Cassirer's last living descendant would be an act of justice and would send a clear message that Spain takes the memory of the victims of the Holocaust seriously. A Eurobarometer survey revealed in 2019 that 66 percent of Spaniards do not believe that denying the Holocaust is a problem, way above the European average of 38 percent. Centuries-old prejudices against Jewish people and lack of proper education regarding the Holocaust are contributing to a rise in antisemitism. By returning the Pissarro, the Spanish government would set the right example.
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Editorial: Finally, the Supreme Court can help a California family get back art stolen by Nazis
The magnificent Impressionist painting of a rainy Paris streetscape that hung on a wall in Lilly Cassirer's home in Germany in 1939 was the price she paid to a Nazi art dealer in exchange for exit papers from the country. It was nothing close to a fair transaction. She was a Jewish woman relinquishing valuable artwork in exchange for safe passage. Eventually her descendants discovered that the Camille Pissarro painting that Cassirer had owned, 'Rue Saint-Honoré, Après-midi, Effet de Pluie,' was hanging on the wall of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid. Cassirer's family has spent two decades in and out of courts unsuccessfully trying to get the painting that all agree was stolen from her by the Nazis. It's a travesty that this family is still fighting for the return of this painting. Now they will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on the legal saga. What makes this time different? A new California law, Assembly Bill 2867, which passed in August and was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September. The new statute requires courts to use California law when hearing cases filed by California residents or their families to recover stolen art or other significant artifacts held by museums. The Supreme Court is finally in a position to course-correct the lower courts on this matter, and it should do so. Until that bill passed, when a California plaintiff sued a foreign entity such as the Spanish museum to recover stolen artwork, the court would decide whether to use the law of the state or the law of the defendant's country. California law holds that a thief never has a legal right to stolen property, and whoever gets the property later never has a legal right to it either. But under Spanish law, after a certain amount of time passes, the holder of stolen property is legally allowed to keep it. A federal district court hearing the Cassirer case used Spanish law and ruled that the Spanish museum could keep the painting. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — twice — ruled that the lower court was correct in deciding that the Spanish museum could keep the painting. The Cassirer family is arguing that based on the new California statute, the 9th Circuit's decision is now 'irreconcilable with current California law.' The family is asking the Supreme Court to throw out that decision and return the case to the 9th Circuit, which in turn should follow the new statute, overturn the lower court's decision and finally order the painting returned to the family. We hope that's exactly what happens. That outcome would be not only fair but also in keeping with broader norms: The Legislature specifically wrote the new law "to align California law with federal laws, policies, and international agreements, which prohibit pillage and seizure of works of art and cultural property, and call for restitution of seized property." In the past even some jurists were anguished over their decisions. Judge Consuelo Callahan on the 9th Circuit concurred with the decision upholding the museum's right to the painting even as she said that appellate judges sometimes must 'concur in a result at odds with our moral compass. For me, this is such a situation.' U.S. District Judge John F. Walter, in his lower court ruling for the Spanish museum, lamented that he couldn't force the museum to 'comply with its moral commitments' as laid out in powerful but nonbinding international agreements (signed by dozens of countries, including Spain) that state there is a moral duty to return Nazi-looted art to its rightful owners or their heirs. Now the California law opens the door for judges to make legal decisions that align with moral ones. But the Spanish government, which owns the museum, doesn't have to wait for those decisions. It should do the right thing and return this painting to its rightful owners. That would be the swiftest way for long-awaited justice to be done. If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
